India’s Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has com-pleted five years in power, heading the 22-party coalition government since 1998. Surprisingly, Vajpayee’s approval ratings remain high in the country although the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).to which he belongs seems to be losing ground. The BJP’s defeat in the State Assembly elections held in Himachal Pradesh recently, despite the fact that the party had sought to communalise the polls, just as it had done in Gujarat, is a pointer to the shape of things to come. The general elections are due to be held next year but it is becoming clear that mere communal slogans or the talk of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, which had catapulted the party from two to more than 180 seats in the Lok Sabha, are not going to help any more. Had they been potent winners, the BJP would not have lost the Himachal polls.

Actually, the Indian polity is in a state of flux largely on account of the fact that the Congress, which used to be a very secular organisation in the past, has started rediscovering the Hindutva appeal. Cow protection slogans, which were the monopoly of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and other organisations aligned to the BJP, are now being raised even by the Congress. The party Chief Minister in Madhya Pradesh, Digvijay Singh, fearing a Hindu backlash in the polls due to be held in his State in November this year, is demanding a ban on cow slaughter. The Congress spokesmen in New Delhi are asserting that the BJP cannot arrogate to itself the right of representing the majority Hindu community and fighting for its concerns. Having been in the political wilderness for long, the Congress seems to be bending over backwards now to project itself as a Hindutva devotee in the hope of regaining power. And now it has won the Himachal Assembly election.

But all along the Congress had been a secular organisation, always expressing as much concern for causes dear to the minority communities as to the overwhelming number of the Hindu electorate in the country. In spite of that, the Congress had remained in power for long. But the situation has changed now. The depressed classes, constituting a sizeable chunk of the country’s population, and the minorities, no longer seem to trust the Congress as they did in the past. Actually, the depressed classes have now thrown up their own leaders who have separate parties and wield considerable influence in certain States. For instance, the Mayawati-Kanshiram led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) commanding the loyalty of the depressed classes and a section of the Muslim minority is so powerful now that it seems difficult to remove her from power. She is the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh but even at the national level, she is a figure to be reckoned with by both Congress and BJP leaders. Many of the backward castes who were earlier supporting the Congress are now with the BSP.

Similarly, the Muslim minority, accounting for more than 15 per cent of the country’s population, used to regard the Congress as its safeguard. But the bulk of Muslims have now also deserted the Congress and are aligned either with the BSP or regional outfits like the Samajwadi Party led by Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh or the Rashtriya Janata Dal headed by Laloo Yadav in Bihar. Not only that, Muslim leaders are also toying with the idea of establishing their own separate organisation to fight the coming elections. They are not happy with the BJP because its leaders had a role to play in the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992. Nor are they happy with the Congress on the ground that the then Central Government, which was headed by P. V. Narasimha Rao, did nothing to stop the demolition of the mosque. Even more important is the lesson they have drawn from the communal carnage last year in Gujarat in which the minority community in the State was the worst sufferer. No wonder, having lost the sympathy and support of the bulk of the lower castes and the Muslim minority, the Congress no longer has such a widespread support base as it had in the past. For regaining power, the party virtually has no option but to seek the support of the Hindu electorate which constitutes the overwhelming majority of the population in the country. The Congress change of stance poses a challenge to the BJP. Of course, the BJP could win easily in Gujarat because the Hindus feared the communal beast unleashed by fanatics deriving support from cross border organisations operating from Pakistan. Had there been no Godhra carnage, which had claimed the lives of many karsevaks returning from Ayodhya, perhaps the political scenario in Gujarat would have been different. The BJP could win Gujarat because of a near total communal split in the State. Since there was no such thing in Himachal Pradesh, the party suffered a humiliating defeat even after raising communal slogans.

The Congress party, which unleashed propaganda to project itself as much a votary of Hindutva as the BJP and also drew attention to the failure of the BJP government to solve the problems of the people in the State, won a convincing victory in Himachal Pradesh. The message of the elections was: voters cannot be taken for a ride and unless they perceive a real threat to their life and property they are not going to be swayed by slogans or religious mumbo-jumbo howsoever emotional or mind-boggling it may be. In fact, the election results in Himachal served to revive hopes that the secular image of India, although impaired now and then by communal violence often instigated by agent provocateurs deriving inspiration for their diabolical deeds from the widespread ISI network, remains safe and intact. Although the BJP leaders have sought to blame internal organisational wrangling for their defeat, the fact that is the performance of the government counts largely in determining the outcome of the polls. But Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and other BJP leaders, instead of seeing the Himachal verdict as a warning, are inclined to regard it as a failure of their party to put up a united front. May be a couple of more electoral setbacks would make them see the writing on the wall. Of course, the performance of the BJP government in Gujarat before the last Assembly elections was by no means exemplary, yet the party won. Actually, the government performance issue was relegated to the background by the communal beast which had ignited the fuse for large-scale devastation in the State. If the majority of people voted overwhelmingly for the BJP in the Assembly election in Gujarat despite the lacklustre performance of its government in the State, it was mainly because they were worried about their own safety and had come to realise that only a BJP government could protect them. There was no such bugbear in Himachal Pradesh and no wonder the electorate turned their back on the party which sought to exploit them by raising religious slogans.